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Critical Thinking Tutorial: Test Your Existing Knowledge

This tutorial will empower you with valuable critical thinking skills that are essential for your university education.

Reasoning Poll

Complete the poll to determine what you already know about how reasoning fails. Remember, making accurate and meaningful connections between your existing knowledge (what you already know) and the new knowledge (what you're about to learn) will help you think more critically about the topic.

Test Your Existing Knowledge

Cognitive ease is when our ‘thinking’ or our ‘cognitive processes’ feel familiar, effortless and smooth.
Agree: 9 votes (90%)
Disagree: 1 votes (10%)
Don't Know: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 10

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that reduce the cognitive effort to handle complex tasks, but they can also lead to errors in judgment, biases, and fallacies.
Agree: 9 votes (90%)
Disagree: 0 votes (0%)
Don't Know: 1 votes (10%)
Total Votes: 10

Cognitive strain or cognitive dissonance refers to the mental effort and discomfort experienced when processing complex or contradictory information.
Agree: 9 votes (90%)
Disagree: 0 votes (0%)
Don't Know: 1 votes (10%)
Total Votes: 10

The more amplified an idea is in the media, the more it becomes influential in shaping our perceptions, even if it is not statistically accurate or valid.
Agree: 10 votes (100%)
Disagree: 0 votes (0%)
Don't Know: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 10

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek or interpret information in a way that confirms our existing beliefs or preconceptions.
Agree: 10 votes (100%)
Disagree: 0 votes (0%)
Don't Know: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 10

Information that is presented in a clear, fluent, or easy-to-understand manner is more believable, even if the content itself is flawed or lacking evidence.
Agree: 10 votes (100%)
Disagree: 0 votes (0%)
Don't Know: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 10

Logical fallacies can lead to flawed reasoning and faulty arguments.
Agree: 10 votes (100%)
Disagree: 0 votes (0%)
Don't Know: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 10

Knowledge of fallacious reasoning, statistical analysis, and cognitive biases can empower critical thinking, effective communication, and informed decision-making.
Agree: 11 votes (91.67%)
Disagree: 1 votes (8.33%)
Don't Know: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 12